I voted for the first time in Colorado after a lifetime of living in Alabama. It was so easy. The ballots were mailed to my home. My family were able to sit around the table and discuss the candidates. We were able to mail the ballots back or drop off ballot boxes are located all over the city. There was no stress, no lines at the voting places, no worry about how to get to work and take time to vote. I received an email when my vote had been counted. I it was a very thoughtful and considerate way to vote. I wish Alabama would adopt this way. The thought of people waiting in line in the heat, trying to get there from work and picking up children or what ever is going on is so sad. In Alabama the time allowed for this important civic exercise is so limiting. It is voter suppression, no doubt.
Same in Oregon. I'm 77 years old and can just barely remember standing in line at the nearest voting site (Knights of Pythius Hall) to cast my ballot. Now I get my ballot in the mail, do my duty, and walk two blocks to my nearest ballot box.
Yes! I live in Oregon as well. It nice to fill the ballot while sitting on the couch and reading about all the candidates from the brochure. After I drop it in the Drop Box, I wait for both an email and a text reply informing me my ballot has been received.
Colorado is one of the best and easiest places to vote. No fuss, no withholding. I get the ballot in the mail, use a dropbox nearby, get an email in a day or two at most that my ballot has been received, and another email a day later that my vote has been counted. Couldn't be easier than that. Thanks Colorado! All states should do this.
Washington state voters here. Mail in ballot voting is the best way to vote IMHO. Of course I always drop my ballot in the drop box about 2 miles from my house. Unfortunately I'm not trusting enough of the USPS these days, although my job is literally preparing various types of letters to be mailed, lol.
California has the same voting process as Colorado. Although there are beautiful places in Alabama, I would not be able to live there. Their voting system speaks volumes about how their state government views its residents.
The Preamble to he Constitution states that federal law is the supreme law of the land. Congress therefore should pass a voting rights law commanding every state to facilitate as much as possible the exercise of our right to vote. You don't need to amend the Constitution to do this, all you have to do is vote Republicans out of Congress.
i'm glad to know i'm not the only one who doesn't recognize this country anymore and can't bring myself to want to celebrate it in its current state. To be american is to buy into the governmental structure of the founding documents and to respect the rule of law. To state the obvious, the current occupant of the WH, by that definition, is not american, no matter how many flags he disgustingly humps.
Like you two, I no longer recognize my country. and do not feel much like celebrating.
In my head, I understand that this IS OUR country too, and respect those who are getting together for their individual celebrations with family and friends. However, the celebration is also supposed to be on a bipartisan national level. OUR country means "ALL" of us. We should be united, if only for one day, by an articulate and caring President.
Instead, I just read the following introductory paragraph to a news story.
"As President Donald Trump encouraged Americans to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary by visiting the restored statue of a Founding Father who enslaved hundreds of people, hundreds of masked white supremacists marched through the streets of Washington, D.C., carrying American and Confederate flags."
Sorry, but I do not believe this type of celebration encompasses all of us. Though my head recognizes that I could celebrate with friends individually, my heart and the hearts of most of my friends are simply not in it.
We're celebrating what our forebears accomplished with their freedom of speech (including the right to vote). We're also celebrating what we can accomplish with ours.
At the blood-drenched battlefield at Gettysburg in 1863, President Lincoln reminded Americans that the generations who bore the responsibility for writing the Declaration of Independence and for fighting to give it life "brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."
That grim November day, President Lincoln admonished that "from [our] honored dead we" should "take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion" and we, the living, should "highly resolve that [our] dead shall not have died in vain" and "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." We are celebrating our continuing ability to do so.
In 1859 (2 years after the abominable SCOTUS decision and opinions in Dred Scott in 1857), when the nation was saddled with a corrupt POTUS, SCOTUS and Congress, Lincoln reminded Americans:
"The people—the people—are the rightful masters of both Congresses, and courts—not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert that constitution."
Yes, correct..now if you could find a way to assure that the Nov. 2026 election will be a free and fair election I’ll sleep better..thank you for your attention to this matter bfg
Celebrate the human rights proclaimed by the Declaration of Independence, and reflect on how every article of and amendment to the Consititution is intended to protect those rights.
I have been advocating for new voter registrants since 2016. It doesn't sound like much, but I've helped 120 young women to register to vote in MD. I talk with everyone I meet, EVERYONE, about the need to use their voice which is their vote. I will continue this practice always.
I love this country. I love our Constitution. There is nothing like it anywhere else. I wish America a Happy Birthday, and I wish all of us a continued free and united existence.
I'm observing the Fourth the way I have for at least the last 15 years: By participating in a community reading of Frederick Douglass's speech "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?," given in Rochester, NY, on July 5, 1852. If there's no public reading near where all your readers are, it's available online, both in recordings and in text form.
Nice! But please also don't forget to celebrate the fact that such a question no longer even needs to be asked in the U.S.
Slavery (and involuntary servitude of any kind except as punishment for a crime) was outlawed by the People in our Constitution with the 13th Amendment (ratified in December 1865 within months after the end of the Civil War).
Then, in 1866 (160 years ago and 90 years after the Declaration of Independence), the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Schuyler Colfax declared that Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment was “the gem of the Constitution . . . because it is the Declaration of Independence placed immutably and forever in our Constitution.” The 14th Amendment (ratified in 1868) clarified what citizenship means: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States" are entitled to all "the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States," which includes "equal protection of the laws." Thus, our Constitution (not merely the Declaration) said that all men have equal rights, privileges and immunities. But even Speaker Colfax overlooked vital aspects of our Constitution.
Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment (arguably) is “the gem of the Constitution" because in fact and in law (the paramount law of the land) it established far more than was declared in the Declaration of Independence. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment established that all citizens have equal rights, privileges and immunities. It established that, according to the paramount law of the land, i.e., in law created by the People speaking for themselves, much more than merely that all men are equal and have equal rights. It established that all citizens born or naturalized in the U.S. are equal and have equal rights regardless of arbitrary factors such as skin color or sex.
The 14th Amendment led to the 15th Amendment, then the 19th Amendment, then the 24th Amendment and then the 26th Amendment. Today, we should celebrate that our Constitution has come a long way since Douglass's speech in 1852 and it has far surpassed even the sublime sentiments of the Declaration of Independence.
Thanks for the history lesson, which (need I say) I didn't need. You might want to inform yourself on how economic power undercuts the Constitution every chance it gets, and in the last 45+ years it's had a lot of chances. Literal slavery on the pre-Civil War model doesn't exist, but seriously, would you have wanted to be a Black person in the U.S. South under Jim Crow? I'm not wild about the popular phrase "wage slavery" because today's "wage slaves" do have more options than the literal slaves before the Civil War, but there are reasons it's so widely used.
The written documents are impressive for sure, but you do realize that the founders didn't believe that "All men are created equal," even if "men" were expanded to include women? OTOH, it's long occurred to me that the wording contained a major loophole: All men may be created equal but then social stratification and economic realities kick in and they don't stay equal for long.
Inequality is a an obvious fact of life. What the Founders meant was that all men must have equal standing before the law. That was a radical idea then.
Susanna, Douglass delivered a subsequent speech that far better addresses the concerns you addressed here, as well as the propriety (or impropriety) of celebrating Juneteenth. I'm sure Douglass wouldn't celebrate Juneteenth. He denounced emancipation as "a stupendous fraud" after he had visited South Carolina and Georgia. See https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/douglassfraud.html. It's the stupendous fraud that should still concern us today, not slavery.
Susanna, in part, I was trying to help you (and others) see that it simply doesn't matter whether some people in 1776 "didn't believe that 'All men are created equal.' " How could that possibly matter whether men then thought or some men today think that "all men" didn't mean all men or that it meant only men? Our Constitution established that all citizens--regardless of skin color or sex--have equal rights and are entitled to equal protection of law. After Douglass's speech in 1852, the people who believe what concerned you and him lost the war, lost the country and lost the Constitution.
Jack, I direct your attention to a couple of real-life developments that undermine your theory. One is the Hayes-Tilden Compromise that followed the disputed presidential election of 1876. It ended Reconstruction and basically nullified the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments in the states of the former Confederacy. This didn't reinstitute slavery but it did introduce its first cousin, Jim Crow. (Things weren't especially great for Black people in the North either. Isabel Wilkerson's THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS explores the stories of Black people who left the Jim Crow South for points north and west.)
The other is the white backlash to the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of the mid-1960s. Remember Nixon's "Southern Strategy"? What resulted was a mass exodus of white Southern Democrats to the Republican Party, changing the character of the latter almost beyond recognition. As you know, it hasn't been "the party of Lincoln" for many decades. We're still living with the results, and with the backlash to the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. These include the Republican Supreme Court appointments that led to the 2010 Citizens United decision, which helped make Trump I possible and perhaps inevitable, given the sad state the Republican Party had fallen into by 2016.
Susana, here's some food for thought. Your argument here is very similar to the argument of the SCOTUS majority in Dobbs. They ignored the language of our Constitution that (they knew) secured the right that they claimed they couldn't see. They even outright lied about our Constitution (the meaning of the Ninth Amendment). Based on their lie about the Ninth Amendment, they pretended that, instead of focusing on the principles in our Constitution, we should focus on the history and tradition of the mere contrary practices of men. The conduct of those SCOTUS justices violated our Constitution and their oaths. They did not nullify or change any part of our Constitution.
Susanna, haven't we had a very similar discussion before? Do you recall our recent discussion about human nature vs. the law? My prior comments are equally relevant here.
Regarding "real-life developments," please understand and believe that developments in the law are real-life developments. That is especially true of our Constitution. Our Constitution is the paramount part of the supreme law of the land. Moreover, it was created by the People for the particular and profound purpose of governing all our public servants. Every part of our Constitution was written and ratified to help protect the People (or some part of the People) from oppression by the people who are meant to be public servants.
Every constitutional amendment that I identified above is a "real-life development." Each such amendment was made part of the paramount part of the supreme law of the land to outlaw conduct that was pervasive and pernicious for long before the amendment was written or ratified. It's common sense to recognize that no such amendment means that the targeted misconduct will never occur again. Laws help change human conduct, but they don't change human nature. Clearly, criminal misconduct or pervasive oppression doesn't simply go away because the law makes it illegal or criminal.
Please understand that the misconduct of our public servants simply never did and never could have "nullified the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments in the states of the former Confederacy." The example I gave you previously is still relevant: when people commit murder, such misconduct in no way nullifies the law making murder a crime. The misconduct--and human nature, as a result of which people do bad things to each other--is exactly what give the law its real-life relevance.
It seems to me that your point is that our legal system--including our Constitution and the people who are meant to be our public servants--don't function perfectly. I heartily agree. But the remedy (or at least part of the remedy) is to highlight how people are violating our Constitution or committing crimes. It's not a solution to presume that our laws, including our Constitution, are irrelevant because of the misconduct of people who want to oppress other people. That's exactly what the oppressors actually want you to think. If you want a recent real-life example, just look at Trump and the people behind him.
For other real-life examples, look at the current SCOTUS majority. I read their decisions (sometimes). I see that they are violating our Constitution. I see that they even are lying to us about our Constitution and our "history and tradition."
I write to help people see how some of our public servants (including the president, executive officers and SCOTUS justices) are violating their oaths of office and our Constitution. I write to educate people about what our Constitution says and means to help show that it clearly means something other than what some SCOTUS justices pretend it means.
I write in recognition and appreciation of the wisdom of James Madison who warned from the outset that a democratic or republican form of government requires a lot of hard work, including education relevant to our self-government and the government of the people who are meant to serve the public as whole, not merely serve themselves or their faction:
James Madison (lauded as the Father of the Constitution and the Father of the Bill of Rights) emphasized that the First Amendment was written and ratified by the People to secure knowledge about, not merely blind faith in, our public servants and to secure our power to speak for ourselves about their public service.
"A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."
Well said, Jack, and do note that today's White House Proclamation mentions the Constitution not once. It is a salient admission that its occupant despises the Constitution of the United Sates of America.
Just want to point out that in Australia, you must register to vote when you are 18, and you must vote in Federal elections (which is, amazingly, a very popular rule). We have 90+% turnout. And because of this, the government is legally required to make registration and voting as easy as possible, and not put obstacles in the way of either. (And voter fraud is negligible because of the way the voting system is designed.)
I wish we had compulsory voting. I know there is plenty of "you're not the boss of me" running in American veins but if voting is a requirement it makes a statement -- this is what it means to be a citizen. Civic duty doesn't get much attention anymore.
Believe me Jessica, voter fraud in the US is negligible as well, but Republicans, who cannot win a free and fair election at this point, would like us all to believe otherwise. Kudos to Australia! I bet you also have paid time off to vote, right?
Federal elections are held on a Saturday. But early voting is readily available (special voting places open in the weeks before an election), and you can also do mail-in voting. All citizens need to be enrolled, and all citizens need to vote. The whole system is built around this. The mind-set is entirely different.
Today would have been a good day for Dems to release a Re-Declaration of Independence (from the golden king and maga), along with a road map, in the manner of Project 2025,) of how to re-orient this country toward representative democracy, decency, grace, compassion, respect, justice, reliability, strength of character, and all the other principles that have made us revered.
I’m an 83 year old disabled woman, but my father established us in voting. He said it was the one thing we could do and must always do. So I have honored his memory and always always vote. Thank you Joyce for keeping us informed. Happy fourth and good luck with your cheesecake.
You too? I remember going with my mom to the high school when she voted so grew up knowing that was what one did as a member of this country. Am 80 now and can say I’ve never missed a general election and only a very few primaries and that was only because we didn’t have early voting at the time and I was out of town. I know we both can remember when everyone voted on the same day and the would have to wait for hours before the results were finally all tallied. They would drag us back to that with a much larger population but preferably counting only white men’s votes. No thank you.
my first voting-related memory is going to our local high school and standing in the booth while my mom pulled the curtains closed and pulled the lever for adlai stevenson. Had to be 1952. Now, knowing how hard it was for women to obtain the vote and what the suffragettes endured to enfranchise us, i never miss a vote. In my state, due to my age, i can vote by mail and always do so. Eff djt if he thinks he can take that away without a fight.
Exactly. I remember the machine being huge with a lot of little levers one pushed down to vote for each candidate. I even remember which hall the machines were located on; the one to the gym as I would learn years later when I went to that high school. Lots of water under our bridges, yes?
I am with you two in memories. Like you I never miss a general election and don’t miss many primaries unless there are no candidates for my area. And I certainly plan to be there for the midterm elections!
I lived in Canada for many years but never missed the chance to vote in US presidential elections. I chose to only vote in presidential elections only because no longer living in the state of last residence, I knew nothing about the local and state candidates. Wanted to do my civic duty
Joan, I have the exact same memory and its a cherished one. As we walked to vote, my Mom explained to me the difference between Democrats and Republicans in words I could understand and then proudly pulled that lever for Stevenson. She'll never know how that experience impacted me. It made me a life long Democrat.
i wish more people understood what the democratic party used to mean. They were truly for the working man. All the adults, male and female, in my family worked and were members of unions affording them living wages, protection from injury on the job, fairness in overtime pay and scheduling, and pensions when they retired, among other things. A lot of the insecurity we see today is due to the loss of unions. And i understand there are legitimate arguments on the other side about high wages driving production costs etc and jobs going overseas. But if we don't have quality of life and just focus on the bottom line for the oligarchs we will end up like the french just prior to their revolution. Exhibit A: the marie antoinette ballroom.
TY Joyce, voting is everything. And all the interference rumor mongering Trump, Patel, and Blanche are trying hard to spew forth in their persecution of Fulton County, GA voting records should be squashed like a bug by all Georgians, Republican and Democrat.
I'd like neighbors like Lindsey Graham to speak up and try to halt the Witch Hunt too. But of course he won't. Or, to the South, how about Rick Scott (he of Medicare Fraud Scam fame*).
There will be shenanigans around our right to vote in the Midterms - count on it. Everyone needs to check their continued registration just before the deadline to register in your state - and take a screenshot as proof. Here are the state-by-state deadlines:
“I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.”
― Albert Camus
“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.”
Katherine, I agree, but if I'm being honest I'm just not feeling the patriotism today, unlike 50 years ago, when the Bicentennial was all the rage and there was profound pride in the country, with Nixon gone and the war ended. It's a different vibe today: my sense is that our views are more looking backward and less forward-looking.
Yesterday I hung a large (6 ft by 10 ft) American flag on the front of our house, and was tempted to include a sign saying "USA, not MAGA", but didn't. The flag will come down tomorrow.
Great idea. I’m a blue dot in a red city in blue California and belong to a Democratic club. Years ago one of our best members hosted a ballot party. We talked and researched and had fun and voted. He, of course, was a completely prepared lawyer. But now we each do something in our own neighborhood. We create a slate card and gather literature from local candidates, like school boards and go knock on our neighbors doors. We stop and have a discussion with them. We also have an annual picnic that our members fund at a nice regional park and invite them (and candidates that are running- we have gotten to know our House Reps and State candidates shake hands). We are trying to show them that representative democracy works if you stay with it. And guess what? Our red city voted for Kamala/Waltz by 7 votes!
Thank you Joyce for your informative substack. Yes, home of the BRAVE (thank you to all military, former and current, for the sacrifice and bravery you have shown) so that we can be land of the FREE (all to be free… this also includes women!)
And a happy Fourth to you and yours. Thank you for all you do, day in and day out, to keep us informed with truth, Joyce. You matter a great deal.
These MAGA folks can believe anything they want. THEY DON’T OWN US OR AMERICA.
The Republicans own Jan 6 is right. July 4 is for all of us.
Just put this quote on my facebook feed
I voted for the first time in Colorado after a lifetime of living in Alabama. It was so easy. The ballots were mailed to my home. My family were able to sit around the table and discuss the candidates. We were able to mail the ballots back or drop off ballot boxes are located all over the city. There was no stress, no lines at the voting places, no worry about how to get to work and take time to vote. I received an email when my vote had been counted. I it was a very thoughtful and considerate way to vote. I wish Alabama would adopt this way. The thought of people waiting in line in the heat, trying to get there from work and picking up children or what ever is going on is so sad. In Alabama the time allowed for this important civic exercise is so limiting. It is voter suppression, no doubt.
Same in Oregon. I'm 77 years old and can just barely remember standing in line at the nearest voting site (Knights of Pythius Hall) to cast my ballot. Now I get my ballot in the mail, do my duty, and walk two blocks to my nearest ballot box.
Yes! I live in Oregon as well. It nice to fill the ballot while sitting on the couch and reading about all the candidates from the brochure. After I drop it in the Drop Box, I wait for both an email and a text reply informing me my ballot has been received.
Ditto CA!
It’s clear that there is nothing wrong with voting by mail. Trump is gaslighting the country to make it harder for people to vote.
Trump votes by mail. Such a pile of bloviating, gaslighting nonsense on a rancid cracker.
Colorado knows how to do it!
Welcome to Colorado Jane! Nice to have you and your family here!
Colorado is one of the best and easiest places to vote. No fuss, no withholding. I get the ballot in the mail, use a dropbox nearby, get an email in a day or two at most that my ballot has been received, and another email a day later that my vote has been counted. Couldn't be easier than that. Thanks Colorado! All states should do this.
Illinois has the same deal. I even research judges when they're on the ballot, because I have time when I vote from home.
Washington state voters here. Mail in ballot voting is the best way to vote IMHO. Of course I always drop my ballot in the drop box about 2 miles from my house. Unfortunately I'm not trusting enough of the USPS these days, although my job is literally preparing various types of letters to be mailed, lol.
California has the same voting process as Colorado. Although there are beautiful places in Alabama, I would not be able to live there. Their voting system speaks volumes about how their state government views its residents.
The Preamble to he Constitution states that federal law is the supreme law of the land. Congress therefore should pass a voting rights law commanding every state to facilitate as much as possible the exercise of our right to vote. You don't need to amend the Constitution to do this, all you have to do is vote Republicans out of Congress.
I count myself lucky to live in Colorado.
I no longer recognize my country..
What are we celebrating today? The past? The future? Certainly not the present..wish I felt more jovial..my t shirt today reads
Voter suppression is unAmerican
Maybe I’ll wear it tomorrow too..
Silence is compliance
i'm glad to know i'm not the only one who doesn't recognize this country anymore and can't bring myself to want to celebrate it in its current state. To be american is to buy into the governmental structure of the founding documents and to respect the rule of law. To state the obvious, the current occupant of the WH, by that definition, is not american, no matter how many flags he disgustingly humps.
Joan and Barbara:
Like you two, I no longer recognize my country. and do not feel much like celebrating.
In my head, I understand that this IS OUR country too, and respect those who are getting together for their individual celebrations with family and friends. However, the celebration is also supposed to be on a bipartisan national level. OUR country means "ALL" of us. We should be united, if only for one day, by an articulate and caring President.
Instead, I just read the following introductory paragraph to a news story.
"As President Donald Trump encouraged Americans to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary by visiting the restored statue of a Founding Father who enslaved hundreds of people, hundreds of masked white supremacists marched through the streets of Washington, D.C., carrying American and Confederate flags."
Sorry, but I do not believe this type of celebration encompasses all of us. Though my head recognizes that I could celebrate with friends individually, my heart and the hearts of most of my friends are simply not in it.
We're celebrating what our forebears accomplished with their freedom of speech (including the right to vote). We're also celebrating what we can accomplish with ours.
At the blood-drenched battlefield at Gettysburg in 1863, President Lincoln reminded Americans that the generations who bore the responsibility for writing the Declaration of Independence and for fighting to give it life "brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."
That grim November day, President Lincoln admonished that "from [our] honored dead we" should "take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion" and we, the living, should "highly resolve that [our] dead shall not have died in vain" and "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." We are celebrating our continuing ability to do so.
In 1859 (2 years after the abominable SCOTUS decision and opinions in Dred Scott in 1857), when the nation was saddled with a corrupt POTUS, SCOTUS and Congress, Lincoln reminded Americans:
"The people—the people—are the rightful masters of both Congresses, and courts—not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert that constitution."
Yes, correct..now if you could find a way to assure that the Nov. 2026 election will be a free and fair election I’ll sleep better..thank you for your attention to this matter bfg
Celebrate the human rights proclaimed by the Declaration of Independence, and reflect on how every article of and amendment to the Consititution is intended to protect those rights.
I have been advocating for new voter registrants since 2016. It doesn't sound like much, but I've helped 120 young women to register to vote in MD. I talk with everyone I meet, EVERYONE, about the need to use their voice which is their vote. I will continue this practice always.
I love this country. I love our Constitution. There is nothing like it anywhere else. I wish America a Happy Birthday, and I wish all of us a continued free and united existence.
Thank you! The same to you!
Today is "We, the People" day...and don't forget it.
I'm observing the Fourth the way I have for at least the last 15 years: By participating in a community reading of Frederick Douglass's speech "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?," given in Rochester, NY, on July 5, 1852. If there's no public reading near where all your readers are, it's available online, both in recordings and in text form.
Nice! But please also don't forget to celebrate the fact that such a question no longer even needs to be asked in the U.S.
Slavery (and involuntary servitude of any kind except as punishment for a crime) was outlawed by the People in our Constitution with the 13th Amendment (ratified in December 1865 within months after the end of the Civil War).
Then, in 1866 (160 years ago and 90 years after the Declaration of Independence), the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Schuyler Colfax declared that Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment was “the gem of the Constitution . . . because it is the Declaration of Independence placed immutably and forever in our Constitution.” The 14th Amendment (ratified in 1868) clarified what citizenship means: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States" are entitled to all "the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States," which includes "equal protection of the laws." Thus, our Constitution (not merely the Declaration) said that all men have equal rights, privileges and immunities. But even Speaker Colfax overlooked vital aspects of our Constitution.
Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment (arguably) is “the gem of the Constitution" because in fact and in law (the paramount law of the land) it established far more than was declared in the Declaration of Independence. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment established that all citizens have equal rights, privileges and immunities. It established that, according to the paramount law of the land, i.e., in law created by the People speaking for themselves, much more than merely that all men are equal and have equal rights. It established that all citizens born or naturalized in the U.S. are equal and have equal rights regardless of arbitrary factors such as skin color or sex.
The 14th Amendment led to the 15th Amendment, then the 19th Amendment, then the 24th Amendment and then the 26th Amendment. Today, we should celebrate that our Constitution has come a long way since Douglass's speech in 1852 and it has far surpassed even the sublime sentiments of the Declaration of Independence.
Thanks for the history lesson, which (need I say) I didn't need. You might want to inform yourself on how economic power undercuts the Constitution every chance it gets, and in the last 45+ years it's had a lot of chances. Literal slavery on the pre-Civil War model doesn't exist, but seriously, would you have wanted to be a Black person in the U.S. South under Jim Crow? I'm not wild about the popular phrase "wage slavery" because today's "wage slaves" do have more options than the literal slaves before the Civil War, but there are reasons it's so widely used.
The written documents are impressive for sure, but you do realize that the founders didn't believe that "All men are created equal," even if "men" were expanded to include women? OTOH, it's long occurred to me that the wording contained a major loophole: All men may be created equal but then social stratification and economic realities kick in and they don't stay equal for long.
Inequality is a an obvious fact of life. What the Founders meant was that all men must have equal standing before the law. That was a radical idea then.
Susanna, Douglass delivered a subsequent speech that far better addresses the concerns you addressed here, as well as the propriety (or impropriety) of celebrating Juneteenth. I'm sure Douglass wouldn't celebrate Juneteenth. He denounced emancipation as "a stupendous fraud" after he had visited South Carolina and Georgia. See https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/douglassfraud.html. It's the stupendous fraud that should still concern us today, not slavery.
Susanna, in part, I was trying to help you (and others) see that it simply doesn't matter whether some people in 1776 "didn't believe that 'All men are created equal.' " How could that possibly matter whether men then thought or some men today think that "all men" didn't mean all men or that it meant only men? Our Constitution established that all citizens--regardless of skin color or sex--have equal rights and are entitled to equal protection of law. After Douglass's speech in 1852, the people who believe what concerned you and him lost the war, lost the country and lost the Constitution.
Jack, I direct your attention to a couple of real-life developments that undermine your theory. One is the Hayes-Tilden Compromise that followed the disputed presidential election of 1876. It ended Reconstruction and basically nullified the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments in the states of the former Confederacy. This didn't reinstitute slavery but it did introduce its first cousin, Jim Crow. (Things weren't especially great for Black people in the North either. Isabel Wilkerson's THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS explores the stories of Black people who left the Jim Crow South for points north and west.)
The other is the white backlash to the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of the mid-1960s. Remember Nixon's "Southern Strategy"? What resulted was a mass exodus of white Southern Democrats to the Republican Party, changing the character of the latter almost beyond recognition. As you know, it hasn't been "the party of Lincoln" for many decades. We're still living with the results, and with the backlash to the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. These include the Republican Supreme Court appointments that led to the 2010 Citizens United decision, which helped make Trump I possible and perhaps inevitable, given the sad state the Republican Party had fallen into by 2016.
Susana, here's some food for thought. Your argument here is very similar to the argument of the SCOTUS majority in Dobbs. They ignored the language of our Constitution that (they knew) secured the right that they claimed they couldn't see. They even outright lied about our Constitution (the meaning of the Ninth Amendment). Based on their lie about the Ninth Amendment, they pretended that, instead of focusing on the principles in our Constitution, we should focus on the history and tradition of the mere contrary practices of men. The conduct of those SCOTUS justices violated our Constitution and their oaths. They did not nullify or change any part of our Constitution.
Susanna, haven't we had a very similar discussion before? Do you recall our recent discussion about human nature vs. the law? My prior comments are equally relevant here.
Regarding "real-life developments," please understand and believe that developments in the law are real-life developments. That is especially true of our Constitution. Our Constitution is the paramount part of the supreme law of the land. Moreover, it was created by the People for the particular and profound purpose of governing all our public servants. Every part of our Constitution was written and ratified to help protect the People (or some part of the People) from oppression by the people who are meant to be public servants.
Every constitutional amendment that I identified above is a "real-life development." Each such amendment was made part of the paramount part of the supreme law of the land to outlaw conduct that was pervasive and pernicious for long before the amendment was written or ratified. It's common sense to recognize that no such amendment means that the targeted misconduct will never occur again. Laws help change human conduct, but they don't change human nature. Clearly, criminal misconduct or pervasive oppression doesn't simply go away because the law makes it illegal or criminal.
Please understand that the misconduct of our public servants simply never did and never could have "nullified the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments in the states of the former Confederacy." The example I gave you previously is still relevant: when people commit murder, such misconduct in no way nullifies the law making murder a crime. The misconduct--and human nature, as a result of which people do bad things to each other--is exactly what give the law its real-life relevance.
It seems to me that your point is that our legal system--including our Constitution and the people who are meant to be our public servants--don't function perfectly. I heartily agree. But the remedy (or at least part of the remedy) is to highlight how people are violating our Constitution or committing crimes. It's not a solution to presume that our laws, including our Constitution, are irrelevant because of the misconduct of people who want to oppress other people. That's exactly what the oppressors actually want you to think. If you want a recent real-life example, just look at Trump and the people behind him.
For other real-life examples, look at the current SCOTUS majority. I read their decisions (sometimes). I see that they are violating our Constitution. I see that they even are lying to us about our Constitution and our "history and tradition."
I write to help people see how some of our public servants (including the president, executive officers and SCOTUS justices) are violating their oaths of office and our Constitution. I write to educate people about what our Constitution says and means to help show that it clearly means something other than what some SCOTUS justices pretend it means.
I write in recognition and appreciation of the wisdom of James Madison who warned from the outset that a democratic or republican form of government requires a lot of hard work, including education relevant to our self-government and the government of the people who are meant to serve the public as whole, not merely serve themselves or their faction:
James Madison (lauded as the Father of the Constitution and the Father of the Bill of Rights) emphasized that the First Amendment was written and ratified by the People to secure knowledge about, not merely blind faith in, our public servants and to secure our power to speak for ourselves about their public service.
"A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."
Well said, Jack, and do note that today's White House Proclamation mentions the Constitution not once. It is a salient admission that its occupant despises the Constitution of the United Sates of America.
Thanks
Just want to point out that in Australia, you must register to vote when you are 18, and you must vote in Federal elections (which is, amazingly, a very popular rule). We have 90+% turnout. And because of this, the government is legally required to make registration and voting as easy as possible, and not put obstacles in the way of either. (And voter fraud is negligible because of the way the voting system is designed.)
I wish we had compulsory voting. I know there is plenty of "you're not the boss of me" running in American veins but if voting is a requirement it makes a statement -- this is what it means to be a citizen. Civic duty doesn't get much attention anymore.
Believe me Jessica, voter fraud in the US is negligible as well, but Republicans, who cannot win a free and fair election at this point, would like us all to believe otherwise. Kudos to Australia! I bet you also have paid time off to vote, right?
Federal elections are held on a Saturday. But early voting is readily available (special voting places open in the weeks before an election), and you can also do mail-in voting. All citizens need to be enrolled, and all citizens need to vote. The whole system is built around this. The mind-set is entirely different.
Sounds good!
Today would have been a good day for Dems to release a Re-Declaration of Independence (from the golden king and maga), along with a road map, in the manner of Project 2025,) of how to re-orient this country toward representative democracy, decency, grace, compassion, respect, justice, reliability, strength of character, and all the other principles that have made us revered.
I’m an 83 year old disabled woman, but my father established us in voting. He said it was the one thing we could do and must always do. So I have honored his memory and always always vote. Thank you Joyce for keeping us informed. Happy fourth and good luck with your cheesecake.
You too? I remember going with my mom to the high school when she voted so grew up knowing that was what one did as a member of this country. Am 80 now and can say I’ve never missed a general election and only a very few primaries and that was only because we didn’t have early voting at the time and I was out of town. I know we both can remember when everyone voted on the same day and the would have to wait for hours before the results were finally all tallied. They would drag us back to that with a much larger population but preferably counting only white men’s votes. No thank you.
my first voting-related memory is going to our local high school and standing in the booth while my mom pulled the curtains closed and pulled the lever for adlai stevenson. Had to be 1952. Now, knowing how hard it was for women to obtain the vote and what the suffragettes endured to enfranchise us, i never miss a vote. In my state, due to my age, i can vote by mail and always do so. Eff djt if he thinks he can take that away without a fight.
Exactly. I remember the machine being huge with a lot of little levers one pushed down to vote for each candidate. I even remember which hall the machines were located on; the one to the gym as I would learn years later when I went to that high school. Lots of water under our bridges, yes?
I am with you two in memories. Like you I never miss a general election and don’t miss many primaries unless there are no candidates for my area. And I certainly plan to be there for the midterm elections!
I lived in Canada for many years but never missed the chance to vote in US presidential elections. I chose to only vote in presidential elections only because no longer living in the state of last residence, I knew nothing about the local and state candidates. Wanted to do my civic duty
Joan, I have the exact same memory and its a cherished one. As we walked to vote, my Mom explained to me the difference between Democrats and Republicans in words I could understand and then proudly pulled that lever for Stevenson. She'll never know how that experience impacted me. It made me a life long Democrat.
i wish more people understood what the democratic party used to mean. They were truly for the working man. All the adults, male and female, in my family worked and were members of unions affording them living wages, protection from injury on the job, fairness in overtime pay and scheduling, and pensions when they retired, among other things. A lot of the insecurity we see today is due to the loss of unions. And i understand there are legitimate arguments on the other side about high wages driving production costs etc and jobs going overseas. But if we don't have quality of life and just focus on the bottom line for the oligarchs we will end up like the french just prior to their revolution. Exhibit A: the marie antoinette ballroom.
TY Joyce, voting is everything. And all the interference rumor mongering Trump, Patel, and Blanche are trying hard to spew forth in their persecution of Fulton County, GA voting records should be squashed like a bug by all Georgians, Republican and Democrat.
I'd like neighbors like Lindsey Graham to speak up and try to halt the Witch Hunt too. But of course he won't. Or, to the South, how about Rick Scott (he of Medicare Fraud Scam fame*).
You're always known by the company you keep.
* https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2003/June/03_civ_386.htm
There will be shenanigans around our right to vote in the Midterms - count on it. Everyone needs to check their continued registration just before the deadline to register in your state - and take a screenshot as proof. Here are the state-by-state deadlines:
https://www.vote.org/voter-registration-deadlines/
“I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.”
― Albert Camus
“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
great quotes!
Katherine, I agree, but if I'm being honest I'm just not feeling the patriotism today, unlike 50 years ago, when the Bicentennial was all the rage and there was profound pride in the country, with Nixon gone and the war ended. It's a different vibe today: my sense is that our views are more looking backward and less forward-looking.
Yesterday I hung a large (6 ft by 10 ft) American flag on the front of our house, and was tempted to include a sign saying "USA, not MAGA", but didn't. The flag will come down tomorrow.
Anybody else feeling kinda "meh" about it all?
I have flown a banana flag for a few years, it will not come down today. I will fly my am flag on the back porch...but it will come down tomorrow
We DO own the 4th of July! And I love the idea of protecting and celebrating our right and obligation to get out and VOTE!
Great idea. I’m a blue dot in a red city in blue California and belong to a Democratic club. Years ago one of our best members hosted a ballot party. We talked and researched and had fun and voted. He, of course, was a completely prepared lawyer. But now we each do something in our own neighborhood. We create a slate card and gather literature from local candidates, like school boards and go knock on our neighbors doors. We stop and have a discussion with them. We also have an annual picnic that our members fund at a nice regional park and invite them (and candidates that are running- we have gotten to know our House Reps and State candidates shake hands). We are trying to show them that representative democracy works if you stay with it. And guess what? Our red city voted for Kamala/Waltz by 7 votes!
Thank you Joyce for your informative substack. Yes, home of the BRAVE (thank you to all military, former and current, for the sacrifice and bravery you have shown) so that we can be land of the FREE (all to be free… this also includes women!)